One Last Goodbye: Even When I'm Broken
by BatmanLoonaticsFan96
Summary: Two-part epilogue to "One Last Goodbye" (HUGE references to and spoilers for said story, so PLEASE read that first)
1. Part 1 - Sara Shepard

One Last Goodbye: Even When I'm Broken

Part 1 – Sara Shepard

 _I can't see anything. At this point, I can't tell if that's actually because the room is too dark or because the pain is so deep it's blinding me. I wouldn't be surprised either way. I'm still trying to fight, but I can barely move anything. They made sure I was as tied down as possible before they started carving through my bones. This is the third day they've been doing it. If the torture was their only purpose, that would imply they were simply attempting to draw out my suffering as long as possible, but there's more to it than that. No, they don't care how much pain I'm in as long as their needs are met. They only do this a little bit at a time so that I don't die from shock and blood loss._

 _I keep pulling at my restraints with all the strength I have left. I don't care if I can't see where I'm going or how many people try to stop me, I just need to get out. I won't be a prisoner like this and I won't give in to the pain. They said this was supposed to make me stronger, but I doubt they could care any less about me. If they had any concern for my wellbeing at all, they would've at least put me under first instead of just cutting in without a second thought. At least the scars are fading fast. I don't wanna be reminded of this. I just want it to end._

 _It's not like it's the first time they played with my insides. It seems like less than a week ago they were fiddling with every cell in my body. I was in agony from the moment I first came back to this body—_ Came back from where, anyway? _—and at least what they did with my blood vessels made it easier. But every time I felt my heart beating, it felt_ wrong _. Part of me hopes that, somehow, whatever they're doing with the marrow of every bone in my body will bring me around again. All of me, on the other hand, just hopes it'll be over soon. I don't know how much more I can take._

 _Every thought I have is cut away from me entirely when I feel the unyielding, crushing strain of something tearing through my right arm. I choke back the urge to cry out from the feeling of a thousand molecules under my flesh tightening. I've handled worse without breaking. I won't break now. I still pull as hard as I can on my left arm, try to free it so I can stop the pain myself, but it's held too tightly and my struggling is enough to threaten letting the restraints break open the skin at my wrist. Obviously, they aren't going to risk me "attempting self-mutilation again" since it could cost them their "investment," so I almost instantly feel my restraints tighten further until I can't move my left arm at all, can barely feel my hand. No getting loose. I'll just have to suffer through it. If I can survive that long._

 _I try to focus on something besides the crippling pain tearing through me. The only thing I can focus on is the anger. They could've made sure I wasn't aware of the pain, but they_ chose not to _. "'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' She needs to feel it. If nothing else, she needs to know what we're capable of. She needs to know her place." Maybe getting free isn't my only interest. Maybe I really wanna tear them to pieces, too._

 _It takes what seems like hours but can't be more than a minute or two before they stop. I take this chance to calm down. I focus on my breathing, try to steady my violent heartbeat. The pain is subsiding. I can take it. I can!_

 _Suddenly, something flashes through my vision, something dark and frightening, something that makes every nerve in my body cry out in agony until the scream I've been doing such a good job of holding back tears through my throat—_

I wake up practically gasping for breath. As soon as my heart's calmed down, I sit up, smooth my hair away from my eyes, and start looking around. I'm in my bed in the captain's cabin of the _Normandy_ , softly illuminated by the dim lights of the aquarium and various electronic equipment. It's a familiar scene, one I've come to call home. I give a quick look up at the viewing glass over my head, through which I see countless glistening stars and streaks of blue from FTL travel.

Then I look at the other side of the bed. The sight brings me to smile again and sends a warm feeling through my heart. Because he's right here beside me. Garrus Vakarian, the love of my life. The man who stood at my side knowing full well we could be walking to our deaths, brought me to fall in love for what must have been the first time in my life, gave me hope again when I started to lose my own, fought as hard as he possibly could solely to ensure my safety, grieved himself halfway to death when he thought he'd lost me forever, saved my life just because I saw his eyes and heard his voice again for the first time in way too long…and woke me up after nearly a year of almost falling away into nightmares.

Like I once told him, I only truly came back alive because he found me. He didn't know it at the time, but he freed me from spending the rest of my days lost in every way imaginable. When I activated the Crucible, my mind was forcibly ripped from my body and cast into the Reapers. At almost the exact same time I sent them into permanent exile, it was torn away from the Reapers and thrown back into a body I once called my own. The transition was more than I could take. The torture I endured in the months after that would have made sure I was something worse than dead if not for that one thought peeking through. I'd hear his name so briefly that I'd forget it as soon as I remembered, but it was enough to give me hope again. That hope was enough to make sure I still fought. Then he came back to me. And suddenly I was alive again.

But it's still not been all that easy. Every night, these dreams attack me. If I didn't wake up every time to find him beside me, it might be enough to break me down. But he's always right here. Right where I need him. I don't know if it's because he knows I need it or because he needs me here as much as I need him or both. I just know that we're more in love than ever and he's not letting go of me. And, really, that's all I need to know.

As I smile, I reach around to place my hand against his face, careful not to wake him up. He's been resting peacefully for once in his life and I don't wanna ruin that. Well, actually, he's been having some dreams almost as bad as mine, but he's still doing _a lot_ better than I am. So I make sure I stay as quiet as I can when I get out of the bed and head over to the bathroom. Then I wait until the door's closed behind me before I turn on the lights.

I pace the room a few times, trying to walk off the memories I've been forced to relive. Those days are long behind me. I've accepted them as such—the past is dead as far as I'm concerned. But when I think about it, not just about what they put me through but about why they did it… Some days I almost think I can hear the Shadows conspiring about it. "Good news! We didn't just find blood samples around the conduit, we found remains in the Catalyst chamber. We don't have to make a clone, we really _can_ restore her! We just have to kill a few dozen people, steal a bunch of technology from what's left of Cerberus, throw our most powerful asari at that Husk we captured and expose her to a consciousness so deep-seated that it tore all other organic minds that connected to it apart except for Shepard herself, and then spend months working to piece her body back together by hand the moment we get her kicking again!" As if I wasn't already sick enough about it.

I sigh as I lean against the sink and look in the mirror. I should be used to what I see. Light red hair, bright green eyes, a few scars here and there from all this body's been through. But it still feels unfamiliar to me. How long was I not in it? Time didn't seem to exist in those days. I could easily figure it out if I knew how long I was with the Shadows, but I had no concept of time through all I endured with them. Or is that it? Does this body seem different because of their "modifications"? Am I really so disconnected because of all those days I spent as a prisoner in my own flesh and bones? Surely, that's not it considering what's truly bothering me—

Suddenly, it happens again. That blue flash in my eyes. The one that comes with a flash of Reaper code in my brain. Every time it hits me, it's like it's trying to remind me **You're not human anymore.** In my waking hours, it's not so hard to take if only because I can immediately retreat to something else. But when I'm so exhausted I want to drop into the bed and forget everything else, it hits me hard enough to feel like a nightmare. The emotional fury is enough to make me fear things beyond terrible—I didn't stop the Reapers after all, this is just some dream meant to taunt me from dark space, I really am a clone infused with Shepard's mind and I'm living a lie—and brings such a reaction screaming through my synapses that I punch the mirror with all the strength I have and shatter it.

That doesn't exactly make things any better. One of the shards scratches against my right palm enough to break my flesh open. The sting makes me grab my wrist and fall back so that I'm sitting on the floor by the shower. But once I'm down, the sight of the dark red blood flowing down from the cut mesmerizes me. I remember the days before Garrus woke me up, when I didn't know who I was or why I had the thoughts of a machine coursing inside me, when I would take a knife to my arm and tear through my skin just to see the blood and remind myself that I was still human. It's enough to break me down, make me wonder over all of it again, but I can't take my eyes off the blood even when my vision starts to flood and my chest aches from the violent hammering of my heart against my lungs.

Then the door opens. It takes a moment, but I finally bring myself to look up. Once again, he's woken me up from those fears. One look in his eyes, one second in which I see such concern for me that I know without a doubt he loves me, and I have the strength again to tell myself _It's over now. You're not a monster._

 _You're not._

Before I know it, he's kneeling down in front of me, taking my hand. "What happened?" The voice I fell in love with is filled with anxiety. Every time something happens to me, he gets that way. He's already lost me twice so I don't blame him. But knowing how much he fears for my sake—more than his own—hurts me more than the actual injury ever could.

I try to explain what happened but I can't do it. No matter how hard I try, I can never bring myself to lay it on the line for him, to tell him what's been tearing me apart inside since the moment I left Earth without him, to share my grievances and hope he can understand. I know he could, but I also know it kills him enough to see me this way as is without hearing the terrible, soul-shattering truth behind why. Besides, I don't have the words for it. All I can do is look down at the blood on my hand and hope that much can answer his question.

Even if it doesn't, he manages to accept it. Instead of searching for an answer I don't have the strength to give, he searches for the medical supplies I keep stashed in here and starts treating the wound. Never in my life have I allowed myself to feel fragile. On Earth, surviving on the streets meant never showing weakness. In the military, it's your job not to. But with Garrus…when it comes to him, I never have to hide that I'm broken. He's seen a side to me no one else in the galaxy has and he's done everything in his power to heal it. Whenever I've felt lost or hurt, he's made it better just by showing me he loves me. That's what I need now.

I don't watch my hand while he tends to it. I keep my eyes on him. As I do, I find my gaze locked on his scars again. I remember how he got them. The moment I saw that gunship hit him, the moment I saw him unconscious in a pool of his own cerulean blood…that was the moment I first knew I was in love with him. I may not have realized it yet, but I knew. What other explanation could there be for how I tore up the gunship in retaliation and almost broke down when I saw him in pain? Every time I think of that moment, the fear of losing him for good starts to come back again. But right now, it's drowned out by all the other fears boiling inside me. For once, I start to look at those scars I hold so close to my heart and see them in a whole new light. For once, I start comparing them to my own and wonder if either will ever heal.

Before I know it, I'm reaching my left hand over and tracing them with my fingertips like I did the night of Omega-4, when we were first really together. The sudden, light touch is enough to make him freeze for a moment. Then he finishes bandaging the wound and turns all his attention to me. The moment his eyes meet mine, I feel the same warmth coming to my heart that emerged the moment I saw him lying next to me only a few moments ago. Only he can bring that out in me. Because he's the only person I really love. He calls me his " _kalwen_." After he told me what that means, how deep a meaning it has, I started wondering if it applied just as much to what I feel for him. Maybe it does. After all, he did say it meant "someone you devote your love to" and I can't imagine doing any less than that with him or anything close to that with anyone else.

I get lost in his eyes for a minute before looking at his scars again. My hand is still against them and his is slowly reaching up to meet it. At any other time, it'd be enough to get my heart rate steadily climbing and drive me to give in to the need to get lost in him completely. But right now, I'm too taken with the horror of what I've endured and what it might have done to me. I need to know that I can still come back from it. "…are they still fading?"

He sighs softly as he gently wraps his fingers around mine. "Slowly. Yeah." I was half-expecting him to make some facetious comment about how he knows they drive me wild (and they do). But he must know how much I'm hurting right now because he's much more concerned with comforting me. And the answer he gives is certainly one I can handle.

Slowly. Just give it time.

Still, that leaves me to wonder about the here and now. And if what I fear is really true, I don't deserve this…don't deserve _him_. All this time he waited for me to come back to him and I came back broken. That's not fair to either of us. I force myself to look away, turn my gaze to the floor. If I look at him now, I'll get lost in that selfish desire to keep him all to myself for just a few moments and I'll never be willing to pull myself out of it. He deserves better than I can give. Not that he'll ever accept that.

"…hey…" His voice is soft, warm, calming, enough in itself to bring me to the point of surrendering to him entirely. Then he touches me again, his talons combing through my hair tenderly so that I just barely avoid audibly reacting. I still don't move, though. As tempting as it may be, I won't succumb to that and wind up hurting him. Maybe it's better for us both if I just stay away. But he won't let that happen. His grasp on me tightens just enough for him to force me to face him again and I don't have the will to fight him off. The look in his starry blue eyes is enough to make me forget why I was trying to fight him at all. I can practically see it in his gaze: _I'm right here with you. You never have to be afraid of anything again._ More than I've ever wanted anything, I want to believe it's true.

In that moment, the good judgment I'm so attached to disappears completely. Before I can sum up a reason to stop myself, I reach up with the hand he bandaged and pull him closer. This is the only thing that's made me forget about all we've suffered through. When we kiss, my heart is in it 100% and nothing else in the galaxy matters. From the way he returns it, I can tell he feels the same way. We've never had any reservations for this. Come to think of it, we've never had any reason to. When you're really in love, you couldn't care less about holding back. Not for any reason that I know.

I'm desperate to stay in this moment as long as we possibly can, but I'm sadly deprived of even that when my lungs start aching. I'm forced to pull away, but I stay close. I can't bear to be any farther away from him. Not anymore. I don't want him to let go of the hand he's been clutching either, but I pull it free now so I can wrap my arms around him. He does the same to me. It's…

… _perfect_.

But the longer I stay that way, the more the doubts come creeping back in. Sometimes it's like I can hear whispers in my head. That alone is terrifying, the stuff of nightmares, enough to make me fear the worst. Now that I have something to lose, I start to wonder not just _What if it's true?_ …but _What would Garrus say?_ I still don't want to expose him to all of it. It'd destroy him. Just the way he reacted to my apparent death is proof of that. But I can't face _this_ any longer. I have to know. "…Garrus?"

"Sara?" My heart leaps when he says it. He never called me by my first name until the day he freed me. Now he won't stop. …I love it.

Still, my mind is much more focused on the anxiety eating away at me. I have to deal with it now, before I lose my nerve again. "…would you still love me if I wasn't human anymore?"

He tenses up when I say it. Clearly, he wasn't expecting this. Every second he doesn't respond is one in which my emotional state gets worse, like he's not answering because he knows it'll kill me. That's all forgotten, though, the moment he pushes me off enough to take hold of me so that I can't look away from his eyes when he gives his answer: "I love you no matter what, Sara Shepard. Nothing will ever change that."

I can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it in the way he's holding onto me—what he said is more true than he can convey. The moment I see that, all my fears are gone. They don't matter anymore, not if it doesn't matter to him. As I realize that, I find that I'm smiling again. Figures he'd be the only one who could get that from me. I don't have any desire to stop, not when our eyes are still locked together, and I don't think I have the power to anyway. So I give in to it, close my eyes, and lean into him again.

He once asked me why I loved him. How a turian like him got a girl like me. Really, I should have been asking how _I_ got _him_.

Growing up on Earth an orphan, my only real goal was survival. I joined up with the Alliance because I thought I could do some good with my life. Then Akuze happened. I was forced to stand back and watch as my entire unit was _eaten by thresher maws_. To this day, I wonder how I got out of that alive. Everyone who's brought it up has taken note of my uncanny survival skills or my remarkable will to live or something else along those lines. It's what got me into the running for the Spectres. But for weeks after that mission, I thought I'd never fight again. I thought it was my fault I lost everyone back there, that maybe there was something I could've done to save them. There wasn't. But that never got through.

Then he came into my life. In those days, it seemed my only purpose in life was the mission. The day of Eden Prime, that purpose turned almost exclusively to stopping Saren. I guess I should be glad it did. Otherwise, I'd never have met Garrus. I may never know what prompted me to accept his offer and bring him along for the ride, but it was the best decision I ever made. In no time, he proved he was an invaluable addition to the team. When I started talking to him off-mission, I started to see him as a real friend. Maybe there was more to it, but I didn't care in those days. I was too focused on what we had to do. No distractions. Distractions meant you weren't operating at peak capacity and any less could lead to disaster. I wasn't going to be the "sole survivor" this time.

After the _Normandy_ went down, when I was brought back from the dead the first time, everything had changed. I woke up after two years to a galaxy I barely recognized and everyone I knew was out of reach. Then he came back into my life. That was what really brought me back. Suddenly, I had a true reason to fight again. Of course, it took Sidonis to make me see why. Part of me wanted to slip back into "full commander mode" and focus on nothing but preparing for the mission. If it was justified for Saren, it was _more than justified_ for Omega-4. One wrong move in the Collector base and we'd all have ended up dead for sure. Or worse. But the more I thought about it that way, the more I realized that my so-called strategy wouldn't work. I was plenty distracted either way. And if I was going to die again, I wasn't going to die regretting that. I wasn't expecting things to play out the way they did. But nothing's ever made me happy like he has. I came to him because I needed someone to hold onto and somehow he decided I was worthy of his heart. I'll never understand why he thought I deserved that or how he came to love me. But I can't live without him. All I can hope is that I'll never have to.

Every thought in my mind is pushed away entirely when I feel him touch me again and every cell in my body starts to come alive with ecstasy. I bring myself to open my eyes again and I see a look of sheer sympathy inside his. For a moment, I wonder why he'd think I still need comforting after what he said to me just a moment ago. I get my answer when I realize that closing my eyes to take in our embrace pushed loose tears. Now I wonder where these tears came from. I thought they were all chased away at his assurance of his unconditional love for me.

…oh. These are…tears of joy. …wow…that's never happened to me before. Just the thought of it is enough to make me release a small laugh. He doesn't seem to understand why until I wipe the tears away and meet his eyes again, showing him in one look that he's just broken every wall I have. I told him once that giving your heart to someone is the most dangerous thing you can do because it gives them total power over you. Only now do I realize that sometimes that's exactly what you want, exactly what you need. So maybe it is the most dangerous thing you can do. But it's also the most freeing. The most trusting. And it's the only way to find the greatest thing that'll ever happen to you. I know he's the best thing that ever happened to me.

His hand is still pressed against my face. I lean into it, gently pressing my own hand to it to ensure he doesn't pull away. Never once do I let myself take my eyes off his. The gesture must mean as much to him as it does to me because he actually smiles. I'll probably never forget the first time I saw him do that. I wasn't nearly as familiar with turian expressions back then as I am now and it took me a moment to figure out what he was doing. Actually, I wound up asking him and the question in itself made him laugh. Even back then, the sound of his laughter was enough to make me smile no matter what was going on around me. As time went by, those feelings became stronger and stronger until the sight of his smile was enough to bring back that maddening desire to lock the world away and spend one more moment with him like the night of Omega-4—nothing but us and nothing holding us back. The best memories I have are of us doing exactly that.

He told me the day after our reunion that it was like he was getting a second chance with me, that this was his opportunity to fix some mistakes he made before Earth. I was honestly shocked by that. I couldn't possibly imagine why he could ever think anything was somehow wrong about the days we spent together during the war. I even asked him what he thought he had to make up for. The first thing he said was that he never told the love of his life how much he cared about her enough times before that final run. I may not have said it out loud, but I wanted to pull him closer and tell him that I couldn't care less, that if I had to choose between hearing him say "I love you" 1000 times and having just one more minute with him before running to the conduit, I would gladly have traded the words away. I didn't need to hear it, I _knew_ he loved me. I knew it the moment we kissed at the top of the Presidium, when we danced at the casino, just from the look in his eyes as he begged me to come back alive from that last fight in London. Even if he knows how I feel, it hasn't stopped him from telling me how he feels at every available opportunity. I'm certainly not complaining. But I would much rather simply spend the rest of my days in his arms.

I don't know how long we stay this way before he decides to stand up again. I still don't let him move his hand until he turns it enough to take hold of mine. When he does, he pulls me up to my feet. Of course, I wasn't expecting him to do that and I end up stumbling forward and almost falling against him. He moves out of reflex, wrapping his arm around me to catch me before I ever fall. Before either of us knows it, we're locked together. Neither of us is willing to move from this. Our hands are still interlocked and we're holding each other close with our free hands. This is exactly what we both dreamed of when we were apart and we're not about to break it now.

Eventually, though, the exhaustion this whole experience has thrown out of my mind comes crawling back and I wind up nuzzling against him like I'm about to collapse here. He notices. He always knows. So he opens the door and starts leading me back to the bed, letting me turn off the bathroom light with the hand not still tight in his grasp. I follow his lead through the room, which now seems a lot darker than it was when I first woke up, until we actually reach the bed. Then I tug on his hand myself and bring him to face me again. I can barely see what I'm doing but I don't care, I don't need to. I know this one by heart. I reach up with my free hand and pull him over to kiss his scars. My personal way of saying "I love you. No exceptions."

Then I pull free from his grasp and climb onto the bed. But instead of ducking my feet under the covers, I pull my knees to my chest. When he looks my way, I nod to the other side of the bed. He knows what I'm asking. He knows as well as I do that I can't sleep without him. I tried the first couple nights after I was welcomed back to my ship. Either I couldn't rest enough to actually fall asleep or I woke up every 20 minutes from the worst nightmares of my life. After about an hour, I ended up calling him to my cabin and all but commanding him to stay the night with me. He didn't exactly put up a fight. I did the same thing the next night; that time, he went immediately from the door to the bed without question. The next night, I didn't even have to call him up before he came in to stay with me. We'd been doing that every night since. He's pretty much the only thing helping me keep my sanity at night and get anything close to rest. Sort of like the teddy bear I had when I was really little. Or that one vague memory of my mother singing me to sleep. Except, now, the nightmares are almost killing me. So, now, I need something stronger. Now…I need my Garrus.

He doesn't say a word before coming around to sit down next to me. Once he's there, he reaches over to take my hand again. It's enough to make me feel like everything's right with the galaxy for once. Like this is all I'll ever need.

"Never let me go again," I beg him, my voice weak as I make the same plea I give every night.

He answers by giving my hand a light squeeze, leaning closer to me. "Wouldn't dream of it."

That's all I needed to hear. I find my smile coming back again as I place my free hand against his and start running my fingers along it. I wouldn't move from this if he didn't eventually retrieve the covers for me. When he does, I lie down and rest my head on my pillow, letting him take care of the rest. Once he's lying down beside me, I wrap my arms around him and pull myself closer to him, feeling my body relax as I take comfort in the feeling of the love of my life holding me safely in his arms. After a moment of this, I feel his talons in my hair again and can't keep myself from shivering or my heart from skipping. I wish I could stay like this forever. But instead, I really do fall asleep.

 _I lose myself in memories again. But these are easier to face. Not the day the Shadows first threw me back into my body, when their top asari connected to their captive Husk long enough to see whose mind was controlling it, when she tapped into it and sent it to my organic form only to be driven mad by the process and die three days later. Not all the days I spent strapped down to that operating table while they "tended" to my body. No, this starts in the days when they were first attempting to convert me, when they locked me in a dark room with their last samples of Reaper technology, technology they had tampered with, unknowingly sending whispers of my own voice to my mind—the only mind any indoctrination could access anymore—and calling me back from the darkness if only for a few moments._

 _It didn't take long for the Shadows to recognize their error. A group of them finally pulled me out and dragged me straight to the armory to talk to_ him _. Killian Orion, the mastermind of it all, the one who commissioned my return to turn me into a weapon. They locked the guns away the moment I entered the room. But I was more interested in something off to the side. Curiously, I walked over and picked up the bow and arrows set down there. Noticing that no one seemed to be paying attention at the moment, I drew the bow and sent an arrow flying at a target across the room. I hit the target, though not the actual bullseye. The Shadows quickly realized what I was doing and prepared to stop me but Orion called them off. I ignored the scene and tried again with another arrow. This one struck the target dead center._

 _After a few days, I overhear Orion discussing something called the Orpheus Protocol. Three weeks later, he comes to me, gives the bow entirely to my care and tells me what I have to do. I have 12 targets approaching Korlus. I have to find them and take them out, preferably using the specialized arrows he gives me that have been treated with species-specific poison. My gut tells me not to trust_ anyone _involved in this. But until I know what's going on, no point in fighting it. Might as well go along. Maybe this will all be over when I do._

 _The moment they hear that the targets have reached the Shadows' base there, they send me in. It's not exactly hard to find them. All I have to do is follow the carnage. If nothing else, I can see why they'd be targeted—these guys are good. About five minutes after I head in, I've located them. They're headed through the door to the central chamber. I survey the situation as quickly as I can without being spotted. Two asari, a turian, a quarian, two krogan, five humans, and one synthetic. All heavily armed. No way am I taking them head-on here. But…the central chamber has an observation deck in the form of a balcony over the main doors. They'd never see me coming. So I move for the access ladder and get onto the balcony. Once I reach it, I see the synthetic beginning to hack into the main console._

"You can't take them all at once from that range," _Orion's voice comes over my COMM, observing from the Shadows' headquarters,_ "And _do not_ let them get their hands on that data!"

 _I start looking for a target. I don't have much time, from the look of it. But my eyes were made for targeting. In a matter of seconds, I catch sight of the central control unit for the console they're hacking into. I quickly fire off an arrow. I hit the target perfectly, though no luck provides an explosion hard enough to take out any of the people standing near it. On the contrary, it simply serves as a warning that leads one of the asari to throw out a barrier around them. Only way through that is to take it down as fast as possible, before they can form a plan of counterattack. Five arrows later, I break through. But I still don't get the chance to finish this before the turian pulls his gun and opens fire._

 _I duck away from the balcony and head back through the main hall. I can hear them following, so I fire back at them a few times. None of the arrows seem to hit the target and most of them are answered with gunshots. I start strategizing as I head for the nearest exit—I can't take them in a straight-up fight if they don't let up and give me room to maneuver, but there's no way they're fast enough to follow me out. Some of the Shadows are already headed over with an extraction shuttle, all I have to do is get to it. As I head out the main door, I see an opportunity to both slow them down enough for me to get away and possibly inflict some damage. There's a platform of shipping crates directly over the door, held in place by one "sturdy" lever. One arrow and it shifts just enough to send the entire platform toppling over on their heads._

 _I ignore the sound of their evasion and head straight for the approaching shuttle. As I make my way to it, I give one last look back at them. They all hit the deck when the platform came down, but the turian managed to get back up again. As I look back at him, he's already aiming a sniper rifle at me. One step away from the shuttle meant to get me out and I'm still not going to make it. But then he sees me looking at him and he freezes. Even from the distance of the entire landing, I can see his dark eyes widening in what seems to be shock. I don't bother wondering why. I just take the chance to get out._

 _Even as the Shadows fly me out to the ship that will take us back to the main base, I actually do begin to wonder._ He had me in his sights. Why didn't he take the shot? …why did he let me go? _I think back to the look in his eyes. As if he'd seen a ghost. As if he knew me before. But I've never seen him before in my life. …have I? …I…I don't remember anything before…before the Shadows came to me. It…it's not…it's all dark, unclear, barely existent, like—_

 _Suddenly, something flashes across my vision. Not the shadowy, mechanical imagery that's been pounding through my pain receptors for months. No, this is different. I forget what I saw just as soon as I see it, but I…_ feel it there _. It's enough to make me question everything. Starting with reconsidering, pondering in a whole new light, the query that's been haunting me since the moment the Shadows brought my senses to return: …who am I?_

 _When Orion hears what happened, he's not happy. He seems to understand that I didn't have much of a chance, but he's not exactly an understanding person. The next day, it gets worse. One of the Shadows' techs has reported a signal from what seems to be their own data. Apparently, all Shadow encryptions are equipped with a homing signal embedded in the code, nearly impossible to perceive and even harder to disable—if the data is decrypted, it "calls home." From the readings the Shadows are receiving now, some of the data my targets intercepted on Korlus was actually retrieved successfully by their synthetic before I disabled the systems and they've managed to decrypt it. Orion is furious for about five seconds, about ready to kill someone, until he sees_ what _data was decrypted. The data only indicates that the Shadows have a secret base on Ilium, and it was previously tampered with in case of exactly this situation. Part of me is interested, almost pleased, to hear that Orion now has a brilliant plan of how to proceed. Most of the rest of me is just plain unnerved at the look in his eyes as he says so._

 _We have some forward notice, so Orion sends me and a contingent of the Shadows to the Ilium base immediately. The false data designated the target location at the top floor of the tower, where one of the Shadows' contacts is. I enter that room through the vents and Orion instantly gives the order to kill the contact, saying the sacrifice is "regrettable but necessary." At this point, I couldn't care less and don't bother questioning before firing off the arrow. Once he's down, I head over to his console and plant the "Trojan horse data" Orion sent me in with. Only then do I head back into the shadows of the rafters overhead._

 _No alarms go off, but the targets do eventually reach the spacious office. It takes all of five seconds for the turian to figure out their objective is already dead. I have to move now. So I pull out a grenade I was supplied on the way here, activate it, and let it roll over to them. The unfortunate beeping sound accompanying it tips them off in time for them to jump out of the way of the actual explosion, but the force still throws them off. While they're down, I drop to the floor and aim as many arrows as I can aim at once, firing right at them. They manage to dodge them all and one of the human women gets up and takes hold of me biotically, throwing me to the floor. When I get up, I realize I dropped my bow during the attack, so I simply turn to face my targets. This time, they all see me and they all freeze. Once again, I keep myself from questioning it in favor of ducking to grab my bow back. By the time I have an arrow ready to fire, though, all 12 of them are aiming their own weapons at me. I start searching for another target, something that doesn't lead everyone in the room to start shooting past every defense I have. I find it when I see a structural weakness in the ceiling just over their heads. After a brief moment of confusion when I let off the arrow entirely away from all of them, the turian figures out what I did and signals for them to evade. As soon as they do and then recover, chaos ensues._

 _This time, I actually have a chance. My opening sneak attacks this time were much more effective and they almost seem off their game. No one is injured, but the incident with the collapsing ceiling managed to slow them down, giving me a serious advantage even against all 12 at once. Speed and agility play to my favor, and actually making use of the specialized arrows I have hidden in my quiver, like the explosive-charged ones, quickly proves to be a useful tactic. In a few minutes, my targets start showing me what_ they're _capable of and the entire room seems to be in the middle of a tropical storm composed of bullets, biotics, and tech attacks. I use every advantage I can find, letting my archer's eye find and exploit windows they clearly missed. One by one, they start going down, incapacitated long enough for me to finish the fight and start getting clear shots at them so I can end this. But as I hear what they say…_

… _they've started calling me "the clone." What? Do they actually think I'm…? Clone of who? Why? …or is that why I don't remember anything before the Shadows got my heart beating? Is it because they_ made _me?_ …maybe…ugh! Forget it! What they say doesn't matter! Just finish them off while you still can! _So I devote all my attention to the last target standing. The turian. He dodges my arrows for a second, giving me a chance to rush at him and start a full-contact fight. After a few moves, we throw each other back, forcing me to abandon the attempt at disabling him and retreat to plan A. The entire time we've been fighting, the few Shadows still moving through the building have been sending the turian poison into the ventilation systems—it was pretty clear that he was leading the squad back on Korlus, so he's target priority #1. All I have to do is keep him busy for one minute longer and it'll take effect. So I aim my bow at him right as he aims his gun at me._

 _We stare each other down, each ready to fire. I just have to keep it up until I have the chance to take him down for good…but something…something's not… As I look in his eyes, I find images creeping distantly into the back of my mind. Images of…of me and a turian. Images I don't recognize, that never happened but…but did. I push them from my thoughts, though. I have enough to deal with as is. I focus on the turian in front of me, the one my bow is aimed at. The poison must be getting to him now. His aim is wavering. He tries to steady it and doesn't take his eyes off me, but he eventually has no choice but to look away. The second he does, I have my shot._

 _I take it._

 _The arrow is tossed aside before it hits its target, who crumbles to the floor in weakness—the poison is definitely setting in. Some of the others, the ones I thought I took down, are back up and ready to try the fight again. I roll out of the way of the first attack and start countering every strike. They should still be worn out from the first round, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to take them down again, but I have problems now anyway. First of all, I'm starting to run out of arrows and I might not be able to take them all down by hand. And secondly, the images I saw during my standoff with the turian are coming again, different now but just as powerful. Every second I spend in this fight brings them pounding on my mind. Pretty soon, it'll slow me down or even start to hurt. Somehow, my targets are bringing them out, so I have to get away. The solution is fairly simple when I see through the window a skycar soaring by. I jump out and land on it. Then I'm free and clear._

 _If Orion was mad after Korlus, he's too furious for words this time. In his eyes, I actually had a chance and I blew it. He still restrains himself, though, because we did manage to get the poison active on the turian again. Orion has officially written him off as either dead or out of commission and no longer a problem. And he makes a point out of the fact that I'm the one who made it possible, ensured our target's descent into the void. The part of me that's been hanging onto the life the Shadows have shown me is certainly showing some joy at the apparent triumph. But I can't deny the way my heart is aching, as if showing infinite grief for something I don't remember doing, or the way the images that have been breaking through my awareness are dimming, becoming less clear and more painful._

 _After a few days, our targets spring the trap we set with the data I planted on the console on Ilium. They're headed to the Citadel, where I will sneak attack them yet again, this time with a full unit of Shadows right behind me. We head to our destination and wait for the 11 left standing to arrive. But as we wait, I find the images slowly returning. Something about this place seems…seems…what's the word I'm looking for?_ Just ignore it. Focus on the targets. The sooner you finish the fight, the sooner you can get out.

 _Orion's strategy on this trap is beyond brilliant. Our targets are clearly trying to track us down, so the data set up for their retrieval on Ilium will lead them to two other phony locations, both already equipped with cannon-fodder contingents of Shadows, and then directly to this place, where they will be both already worn out and unsuspecting of the sudden appearance of a larger squadron of assassins led by me. Not to mention a jamming signal specifically designed to disable their synthetic companion will be following them the whole time, apparently interfering with their COMMs as well so that they can't be located or call for backup. With those odds? They'll be easily defeated. And rather than try the tactic I mistakenly employed on Ilium by trying to incapacitate them long enough to get a clear shot with the poisons, anyone taken down in the fight will be apprehended before they can get a chance to recover. Then past faults will be rectified and all of them can be handled at once._

 _It doesn't take as long as we thought it would for them to show up. Things go as planned for about four minutes. Then a concussive arrow I fired at the quarian sends her flying through the window. She'll definitely survive the fall itself, but she'll likely be injured if nothing breaks that fall. Knowing the way our targets seem attached to each other, she'll still come back to the fight and probably be the last one down before we make our big escape. So I turn my attention to one of the asari and start fighting her off. The fight goes reasonably well for about two minutes before something cuts in._

 _A gunshot goes off, flying through one of the windows and hitting the wall behind me. From what I can see, it was aimed at me and missed by no more than five inches. The only person I know of not fighting_ inside _is the quarian, but she was using short-range weapons that could never be anywhere close to that accurate. I derail that train of thought, though, when I notice that the asari is just as confused as I am, giving me the chance to knock her out. The others instantly start to turn their attention to me, but that gives the other Shadows a chance to enact our plan. In a few moments, all our targets are down._

 _Then, right as we start to move out, I find that the turian is back. For a split second, I'm sharing the fury I know Orion is going to show at the fact that the poison didn't finish him. But something about him starts to eat away at my resolve. I don't understand it, this urge to give in, so I focus on stopping it. Best way I know of to do that is to kill him while I can. So I move in, prepared to deliver the final blow, but he dodges it. As he does, the other Shadows clear out to take our captures away. It's just me and him. Good. I put my bow away and jump in completely. As we start fighting each other off, I…I think something about his movements seems familiar. Not just from fighting with him on Ilium, but…but what?! What is it?! I shake it off. This isn't the time for this! I finally manage to pin him down but he throws me back. I'm down for a moment, probably just long enough for him to get a clear shot at me. I quickly set off another grenade. Just like on Ilium, he moves out of the way of the actual explosion only for the force of it to throw him back. This time, he falls out a nearby window. I pull myself up and head over to it, finding him on the ground outside. He's not injured, but the poison is starting to kick in again. I've finally got my shot. I just have to…_

… _to…_

 _Then it happens. I see him through the window, lying there weakly, and everything becomes clear. The images that have so distantly been trying to break through finally succeed and I recognize them all. Only a few come back, but they're the strongest of all of them. And they're exactly the ones to show me why I know this turian so well._

…Garrus Vakarian…

 _I remember now. I know why these thoughts have seemed so familiar. Not every image is truly recognizable, but a few come back to me with enough force to awaken the thoughts I left behind with them. Thoughts like_ No one knows me like he does _,_ I wish I could spend forever with him _, and_ How could I live without him?

 _One is stronger than the others, distinct enough for me to identify it as a true memory. A memory of sitting beside him in a cleared-out station after taking a bullet in the leg. I remember his hands against me as he tried to staunch the bleeding—our medical supplies had run out, but I don't remember why, and someone else was supposed to be with us, but they must have gone to get help. I remember taking sharp, tight breaths as the pain settled in. I remember him bringing me to look at his eyes, a feeling so strong I forgot about the pain entirely. I remember him trying to keep my mind off the wound until it could be sealed, asking me to "Tell me another one of those stories you love so much." I remember thinking it over and deciding against it, telling him "Why don't_ you _give_ me _one, Vakarian?" I remember losing myself in his voice. …yeah…I remember that._

 _Most of the other images come through in a jumbled haze, but they're still strong enough for me to see what they are. Vaguely, I see the look in his eyes tell me "I can't live without you either," feel his touch sending surges of pure emotion through me, hear his voice say "I love you" as he reached for me…and I let go._

 _As I see the truth, my breathing quickens with the shock._ What have I done?! _I left him. I've been fighting and hurting him. And, worst of all, I used the fight on Ilium as a distraction to let a_ deadly neurotoxin _settle into his veins. I've wounded him in every way possible and, as a result, his life expectancy has been reduced to days—if not_ hours _! I can't let him die! There has to be something I can do!_

"What are you waiting for?!" _Orion's voice suddenly breaks through my COMM,_ "Finish him!"

 _If I don't follow through, Orion will call the other Shadows back. I have to act now. I have to make the Shadows think he's dead and keep him from getting himself killed by trying to follow them alone. If I can disable him long enough for the Shadows to get away and the quarian to find him, we'll both stay safe long enough for either of us to have a chance. On instinct, I reach for my quiver and I find my answer._

 _He finally has the strength to turn up and look at me right as I nock the arrow and prepare to fire. He can't see it from there that he's woken me up. He doesn't even know who I am now. I can't exactly say I blame him, especially considering_ I _barely know who I am anymore. So I can't blame him for closing his eyes so he doesn't have to watch as someone who looks exactly like the woman he loved prepares to deliver the final blow._

 _But I don't. I shift my aim just to the left of him before loosing the arrow. It hits the ground at his side. When he notices, he looks at me in shock and confusion. I return his look with sorrow and hope my eyes are still carefully blank. Then I head off after the Shadows and pretend not to break inside when I hear the gas arrow go off._

 _When we get to Omega, our captives are instantly thrown into closed-off cells in the tunnel networks. Apparently, Orion's been planning this for longer than I thought. I must be the best actress in the galaxy in my efforts to pretend what happened with Garrus never did, because Orion is practically overjoyed believing that our turian target is most definitely gone for good and we're moments away from ending all the others. It takes a lot of effort to hide how I feel absolute hatred growing inside me. Even to the moment Orion leads me into a control room._

 _"This console controls the security for the whole tunnel system…" Orion tells me, "…and the kill switch we planted in those cells. Hit the button and it's all over."_

 _I know now what he's trying to do. His brilliant plan requires me to pull the trigger. What kind of trigger it is doesn't matter as long as they die screaming. This particular trigger will probably strike them all at once with poison gas and strengthen the jamming signal to the point of program termination. But the memories—_ That's what they are. Memories. _—are coming at me freely now. I don't remember clearly, but I know that each of the people held hostage here are my friends from my old life. I can't let them die. I have to find a way to free them. But I can't do that without giving myself away in the presence of several dozen assassins. If I don't strike now, they're all done for; if I do, then I am. I start to reach for the console, pretend I'm ready to hit it, and prepare to—_

 _Suddenly, every system lights up with the same message. "SECURITY BREECH DETECTED!"_

 _Hoping I'm doing a remarkably good job of hiding it, I beam with delight when I realize who must have set off the alarms and how._ Garrus!

 _Orion instantly starts dispatching Shadows to the tunnels. I follow from the sidelines as the assassins make their way to the fight and eventually move to retrieve the captives that haven't been saved yet. They only succeed in pulling out one of the asari and one of the female humans before the newly-freed squad can get to them, but half of said squad is in hot pursuit. It doesn't take long for the fight to reach an industrial district. That's when the squad converges on the assassins, this time headed by Orion himself, and break into an all-out fight._

 _As I sneak into the shadows of my chosen vantage point, I watch the fight. I take my time getting my bow ready and watch the people I once knew take on overwhelming numbers of highly-skilled assassins. They're amazing. I almost recognize their brilliant methods and they work together as well as if they'd been doing this their whole lives (which, in the case of the tank-bred krogan, I guess would be true). While I actually bring myself to nock an explosive arrow, I look over at Garrus. I recognize the move he just made most of all. Muscle memory tells me to couple his shot with one of my own. I just barely keep myself from giving us away by doing so, and the pain buried in his eyes as he remembers I'm not going to is almost too much for me to take. But as he takes that chance to observe the Shadows' movements and picks up on their attack plan, I take aim. I keep the arrow pointed at him but I wait until he looks my way to set it loose. When he actually sees me and jumps out of the way, only then do I let it fly. It hits the ground just in front of where he was standing. But it'd take an archer beyond even my skill to see that I was aiming there the whole time._

 _While everyone takes a second to realize what happened, I jump in. One of the krogan, the battle-master, almost instantly attacks. My shields take the bullets that draw closest and I manage to dodge most of the others. In between, I start firing arrows at him. It's mostly the bladed arrows, the kind of hits a krogan of his caliber could easily just shake off like a bee sting. He's not as agile as I am so he can't just dodge them, but he's strong enough that it doesn't matter. But when one hit draws a bit too close for him, he outright storms at me. Seeing as I'm right by a wall, the impact could break bones, so I instantly roll out of the way as fast as humanly possible. But I drop my bow in the process. If anyone tries to take a shot at me now, I might not be able to get out of it without giving myself away. Of course, I forget that completely when I turn enough to see Garrus slowing down. The poison is setting back in again, so strong that he doesn't even notice the Shadow coming at him until he's already pinned down. I can't help him, but I see the quarian moving to right as my krogan opponent starts at me with his shotgun._

 _"ENOUGH!" Orion sends out a powerful shockwave, throwing everyone in the room to the floor. The Shadows, of course, are the ones who recover first, instantly recovering their weapons and each pinning down one of my old friends. I quickly follow through and grab my bow back, moving to my target as someone else covers the krogan._

 _I pull out a concussive arrow as I step closer. I'm the one getting ready to shoot at Garrus. Figures. But if I can set off the arrow just right, it'll have the same effect as the gas arrow—he'll be unconscious and the Shadows will think he's dead. On the other hand, if I mess up, I'll give myself away for sure_ and _wind up hurting him. I have to hope I'm not forced to take my chances._

 _Before I can ever get the chance to test my theory, Orion makes his move. "We've come too far." As he says it, he storms over to the quarian, the only one not held down by a Shadow since she was hit hardest by the blast from being closest to him when he set it off. "You're not standing in our way now." He draws a knife. I instantly recognize it as the one treated with quarian poison._

 _As I look at her, in mortal danger unless someone makes a move immediately, I find my memories of her break through completely as well. Memories of shotguns and combat drones, of geth and drive cores, of her being one of my best friends in the entire galaxy. Finally, her name comes to me as Garrus' did. Tali'Zorah vas Normandy._

 _I can't let her die. I have to save her no matter what it takes._

 _So I turn my aim from Garrus to Orion and don't hesitate to let the arrow fly free. The arrow detonates once it's close enough to him, throwing him back into a wall. As I rush at him, the fight breaks out again. Clearly, everyone present was shocked by my "sudden defection" and chaos ensued. I use that chaos to get a shot at taking down Orion for good. If I can do that, it's all over. It takes a minute, but I manage to get the upper hand. He's on the ground, disabled, likely for a few moments. Plenty of time to end this._

 _But as I turn to retrieve a bladed arrow from my quiver, my eyes catch on someone else. Garrus is staring at me in shock. When my eyes meet his, I find more of my memories of him coming free. I remember what we had together and why he means so much to me. Slowly, I descend entirely into visions of "When this is over, I'll be waiting for you," of "I don't know what I'd do without you," of_ This is what real love feels like. _It's enough to paralyze me for a moment, make me forget everything around me as I lose myself in his eyes for the first time in much too long._

 _That moment is suddenly broken completely when a mechanical signal flashes through my mind, striking me hard enough to be painful. I clutch my head, clenching my eyes shut as I turn away. The only thing that shocks me out of it is when someone comes up behind me and grabs hold of me. I feel a pressure in my veins, then everything fades to black._

 _When I wake up, I'm back in the same dark room where the Shadows pieced me together. At first, I overhear their conversations, stuff about "tightening the leash" and…_ oh _…! Now I understand what they're doing. They want to drive the memories away. They want me to forget everything about my old life. They want me to be what I was, just not who I was. They want to turn me into their perfect little soldier, an agent of insurgency. They made a good choice for a candidate. But I won't let it happen._

 _They know I'm fighting it now. So, at Orion's command, they don't hold back when the torture starts this time. But it takes a lot more than that to break me. I cling to the names slowly returning to my mind. I have to fight this, to hang on to the life I thought I'd left behind. If not for myself, then for them._

… _Garrus Vakarian…Tali'Zorah…Liara T'Soni…Ashley Williams…_

 _I've always had a high tolerance for pain. It always came in handy in my old life. It comes in handy even more now. But the pain accumulates. Eventually, that tolerance I'm so fond of is hardly noticeable anymore._

… _Miranda Lawson…Jacob Taylor…Mordin Solus…_

 _They are still taking care not to injure me past a few bleeding wounds that promptly seal. No question why—they want me back in action the moment this is over. Of course, they also want me to be an unquestioning slave of their grand scheme. Nothing in the galaxy will make me consent to that._

… _Kaidan Alenko…Thane Krios…Urdnot Wrex…_

 _Orion finally starts to contribute. That's when I start to reach my limits. I'm saved from that when the techs find him and inform him that the systems have been hacked. I don't have time to realize what that means, though, before he leaves the room and all I've been enduring for hours now starts back up again._

… _James Vega…Jeff Moreau…Legion, Grunt, Samara, Jack, EDI…_

… _Garrus Vakarian…Garrus Vakarian…_

…

… _Sara Shepard._

 _Commander Sara Shepard. That's my name. That's who I am. The moment I remember that, everything else comes back to me. I was born on Earth on April 11, 2154. I lost my parents when I was young and lived on the streets for 15 years before enlisting with the Systems Alliance military. I was the sole survivor of the mission to Akuze. I'm the first human Spectre. I saved the Citadel from Sovereign, Saren, and the geth heretics. I saved humanity from the Collectors. I stopped the Reapers with the Crucible…at the cost of my own life._

 _When I remember taking control of the Reapers, the same mechanical flash that caused me pain earlier strikes again. It doesn't have as strong a physical effect on me this time, but the emotional reaction is more than I can bear when I realize what I'm seeing. Reaper code. Like they're still inside me…or I'm still a part of them._

 _After that revelation strikes me, I take the return of the pain as a mercy. It doesn't stop until the Shadows in the room make some comment about the door being remotely unlocked. I ignore their attempts at discovering the cause, focus on calming myself down. When I hear the door open, I brace myself for the inevitable._

 _It doesn't come. Instead, someone rushes to my side and undoes my restraints. "Don't worry, we're going to get you out of here." I know that voice. It's the voice I fell in love with._

It's him. He's here. He came back for me. _I instantly sum up all the strength I have to call for him and open my eyes to face him._

 _"We just have to—"_

 _"…Garrus?"_

 _He freezes. They all do. Of course, they do. They thought I was a clone, they had scientific proof of it and everything._ I _would've thought the same if I hadn't seen what the Shadows were doing. But clones don't naturally have access to their antecedent's memories and the Shadows would never have given me a mental imprint with the memories attached if they were just going to go to all this trouble to suppress them. I'm real. They have to know that now._

 _I have to know it myself. I have to know this is all real and not some carefully crafted illusion to drive me past my breaking point. I need to know he's really here with me. So I use the rest of my strength to reach up with the hand he just released and I press it against his scars. I know that feeling too well to think this couldn't possibly be true. The moment I see that… "…Garrus…" …my heart leaps in my chest as I meet his eyes._

 _"…Sara?"_

 _Any memory lingering of the pain fades away entirely the moment he says that. I instantly feel my strength returning. Our reunion is short-lived, though, because the Shadows locate us in no time and start pouring in to end this fight while they can. Next thing I know, I'm fighting at his side again. That's enough to bring me joy in itself. I wouldn't want anyone else at my six. Every wave of assassins we fight off, every line of banter we share—it makes me feel alive again. …it makes me feel like I'm home._

 _But when Orion joins the fight again, everything goes south. One by one, my old squad-mates are thrown to the dogs. There's no doubt in my mind they can handle it, but that significantly reduces our chances against Orion himself. Eventually, Garrus is the only one fighting him. When Orion starts to seize this chance to finish him off, I lose my sense and outright charge at him. The resulting fight between me and him leads Garrus to jump in. Next thing I know, a concussive shot goes off at our feet, throwing me back…and throwing Garrus and Orion through a window to the mine shaft. As soon as I'm back on my feet, I fight my way out of the chamber and to the elevators, heading down to the caverns where they will both undoubtedly end up. By the time I get there, Orion has Garrus pinned down. I manage to bring him off, but he still goes out of his way to injure the disarmed turian. Once they're separated, I duck into the fight again. The fight isn't easy. It only ends when I'm thrown aside and Orion has a hold on Garrus, enforced by a crushing grip on his broken hand. The biotic assassin has his gun armed. If I move now, no arrows at the ready, Garrus will get shot. I can't do anything to save him besides give in. So that's what I do. Anything is better than losing him._

 _Clearly, he thinks the same about me. Because it's only a moment later that he pulls out an arrow I fired off earlier and drives it into Orion's chest…taking a bullet in the process._

 _I watch in shock as Orion falls back and drops dead. It's over. But the cost was too high. I try to tell myself otherwise—_ it missed him, it didn't get past the armor, he's not bleeding to death, HE'S NOT! _—only for him to prove otherwise when a stream of blue blood flows out of a wound in his left side and onto his broken hand. If my knowledge of turian physiology is right (_ As well it should be. _)…it's fatal._

 _"GARRUS!" I rush over to him as he falls. I can still feel a pulse, but he's not responding and his breathing is weak. He said I had a nasty habit of dying and coming back to him on Omega. He has a worse one. Both times have been almost immediately followed by him being fatally injured and me begging him to stay with me. "No, Garrus, you can't! I just got you back, I can't lose you now!"_

 _I put as much pressure on the wound as I can, try to stop the bleeding before it's irreversible. I try to ignore the sensation of cobalt-colored blood on my hand or the fading beats through his veins, try to instead think of some way to help. I don't have any medical supplies and I don't know where the_ Normandy _is so I can't take him to the med bay…for once in my life, I'm helpless._

 _Then a silence falls over the caverns. I quickly realize it's the sound of the fight in the central chamber drawing to a close. There's no doubt in my mind who won. They can help. They have to._

 _I don't have a COMM connecting to them anymore, but Garrus does. I quickly tap into the frequency. "Tali! Liara! Please tell me you can hear me!"_

"We read you, Shepard," _Tali's voice answers,_ "Are you alright?"

 _I ignore the question entirely. I'm not the one who matters right now. "Forget that! You have to get down to the mining caverns!"_

"The caverns? Shepard, what's—"

 _"GET DOWN HERE!_ NOW _!" Before any response to my desperate cry can come, I turn off the COMM signal and return to my attempts to keep the love of my life alive. "Please don't leave me…you brought me back to life and I can't live without you."_

 _I only distantly recognize how the elevators open to let the others in. I only distantly hear Liara come rushing over. "Goddess…" She reaches in, pressing her hand over mine to help stop the bleeding. "It's going to be alright, Garrus, just hold on."_

 _I barely notice when James finally reaches us with the medi-gel supply. "Come on, Vakarian, don't do this to us…"_

 _I never once take my eyes off of him. My right hand pressed to the cavern floor, still covered by the blood released before the wound was sealed, my left hand is against the scars formed last time we were reunited this way. I don't even register when Liara and James finally walk back over to the others, giving the report and calling to the_ Normandy _to get the med bay ready to treat a critically-injured turian. I just sadly move closer to him, wrapping my right arm around him and fighting back tears. "…please…Garrus…come back to me…"_

 _It's nearly a minute after my voice reaches him again that he starts to respond. He's actually waking up. For a moment, I can't believe it. Then his eyes open and find their way to mine. "…Shepard?"_

 _Just hearing his voice again is enough to jumpstart the heart I didn't realize had fallen to a painfully slow rate. I can feel my joy returning for the first time in all too long. "Garrus…"_

 _As the hand I have pressed against him begins to stroke his scars, he reaches up his uninjured hand to stroke my hair. "…Sara…"_

… _he never called me that before today. I never thought I'd be so happy to hear someone use my first name. But when he does it? Hearing him use it brings an exhilarating delight to my heart that I've never felt before, strong enough to bring back the tears I've been fighting away. "It's me. …don't leave me again."_

 _The moment I voice my plea, he uses all the strength he has left to pull me closer and kiss me again. I really have been dead until now. First he woke me up, now he's made me feel alive again. "Never."_

 _No. I'm not leaving either. Never again._

"Sara…"

I wake up suddenly from the gentle prodding of his voice. I still have my arms around him, I'm still leaning into him. Slowly, I bring myself to open my eyes and look at him.

As soon as our eyes meet, he smiles again, a sight that lights up my world. "Hi."

I smile back, waking up happy for once in my life. "Hey." I lean in to kiss him, savoring every second while I can. We pull each other closer, so caught up in this passion that I doubt either of us notices how we end up going from lying there together to sitting beside each other again. I can't say I care. As long as we're together…nothing else matters.

But something feels wrong, like he's holding back. I pull away and meet his eyes, silently asking what could be bothering him. As soon as he sees the question in my eyes, he looks away out of…guilt? …oh. He's hiding something. He's never kept any secrets from me before and this one is killing him. That must mean he's worried about how I'll react. After what's been going on with me lately, I can't say I blame him. He's just trying to protect me, like always. I can understand. If he doesn't wanna tell me, then it doesn't matter. He has to know that.

I place my hand on his arm but I can't get him to look at me again. Then my gaze catches on his hand. His left hand. The one that was broken in my defense. I think back to that day, when he lost it at the thought of how I suffered and got himself injured in his attempt at retaliation, when I saw him hurting at my expense and gave myself up to protect him…when he surrendered himself to death to save me and just barely survived. The memory almost leads me to tears again. As carefully as if he's still broken, I reach to take hold of him with the hand he bandaged and run my finger against the newly-realigned bones. He looks at this unreceptively and still doesn't meet my eyes.

I smirk to myself as I find he's just given me the perfect opportunity to make use of a trick I discovered some time ago. I place my free hand against his scars again and stroke them with my thumb. Then, while his guard is lowered, I press my other fingers to the flesh just under his fringe and start rubbing it. For about half a second, he starts to react gleefully. Then he realizes what I'm doing and pushes my hand off. He gives me a look and I almost believe he's going to try telling me off. Then he smirks mischievously back at me. I barely have time to figure out what he's planning before he's already put his hand against my neck and around my ear and started tickling me. I shove his hand away the moment I get a chance, but I've already started laughing by then.

…huh. This might just be the first time I've _really_ laughed since…well, before London. Figures he'd be the one to get it from me. Guess love really does give someone total power over you. …never thought I'd be so OK with that.

He smiles brightly at me as I recover from his impromptu assault. Then he notices that the way I frantically flinched away from him tossed my hair over my left eye and he reaches over to brush it back. No shiver sweeps through me this time. I'm too lost in his eyes, piercing blue shining with unspoken declarations of love. Seeing that, I almost want to outright tell him never to say it out loud again so that I can simply let it fill my thoughts every time I meet his gaze. Nothing would make me happier. "What were you dreaming about?"

I smile again as I know my answer. "…how you woke me up." _How you saved my life._

We both know the moment I say it just how much we need each other, how deep these feelings go. In a moment, we've both let down our walls completely. As we move closer to each other, I reach over to softly scratch between his plates again, drawing a faint growl of pleasure like the purring of a cat. In return he starts to play with my ear again, not enough to send me into spasms but enough that I'm powerless to stop smiling. This…this is a moment I wish I could live in forever.

I've always known I could count on him. But he's done so much more for me than anyone should be capable of, more than he could ever know. I'm actually starting to feel like myself again. Like I can do more than put the past behind me, like I can outright forget the past year ever happened. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter either way. My life may have once been dependent on those struggles, but now it's the farthest thing from my mind. Nothing matters but this, the love I've found with a turian named Garrus Vakarian. Thanks to him, my life has changed. I can finally live the rest of my days happy and free. Because he loves me. Even when I'm broken.


	2. Part 2 - Garrus Vakarian

Part 2 – Garrus Vakarian

 _Time seems both frozen and passing all too fast. I was watching the stars fly past, but that was a short distraction. I lost my focus completely in the human lying beside me. It's still lost in her now. She's still watching as the ship crosses the sky, but she's also holding tight to my hand, gently sliding her fingers over mine. For what feels like hours, I've been taking in the sight of her. Every detail that makes up who she is, inside and out, reminds me why I know so certainly that I must be falling in love with her._

 _The hand not lying over her waist, caught by her affectionate motions, is simply resting at her side. Her free hand is right beside it. Slowly, I bring mine over to hers and start to softly trace the curves. She smiles at the sensation, closing her eyes to take it in. That brings me to give a smile of my own as I move my hand away from hers and let it inch its way over her arm. She barely moves in response, except for the steady rise and fall of peaceful breathing._

 _This perfect moment keeps up until my hand reaches her upper neck, around her ear. Suddenly, she pulls away from my touch, holding back a small burst of laughter._

 _"What?" I ask._

 _"Nothing, just stop touching my neck like that."_

 _"What, like this?" Partially with the express intent of provoking her, I start lightly digging my fingers into her skin again, producing another reaction of flinching back and a this-time-unsuccessful fight against laughter._

 _"Stop it!" she snaps, forcing my hand away and pulling herself up to a sitting position._

 _I follow her lead. "Something wrong?"_

 _"No! I'm just ticklish."_

 _I blink, not understanding. "What?"_

 _She sighs. "Most humans have areas on the body where the nerves are over-receptive and the right kind of pressure causes the endorphin rate to go up, usually causing spasms and violent, involuntary fits of laughter."_

 _"That sounds painful."_

 _"It's more of a 'friendly torture.'"_

 _"So this is fun for you?" I smirk, reaching to try again._

 _She starts laughing again, curling up to push me off. "_ No _! Now stop!"_

 _I comply this time, pulling my hand back, but the whole scene almost has me laughing._

 _"Don't turians have anything like that?"_

 _"Well, some of us have trigger points—pressure on them makes hormone levels increase rapidly, it, uh…causes strains of ecstasy."_

 _She just gives me a curious look. "Are they always in the same place or do they vary, too?"_

 _"It varies, but the most common place is just under the fringe, between the plates."_

 _Before I can notice how her eyes are alight with the spark of mischief I love so well, she already has her hand behind my scars. "You mean right_ here _?"_

 _A sudden, overwhelming flow of euphoria breaks through me. The fact that_ she's _the one kindling it makes it even stronger. I start to fall into it completely. Then the sound of her almost laughing at my reaction snaps me out of it long enough to remember what's causing this feeling and I push her hand away from me. "That's not funny!"_

 _"It's kind of funny for me!" she smirks back, "All this time and effort I've been putting into getting you excited and all I had to do was scratch behind the ears?!" She starts to do it again._

 _I just barely keep myself from falling for it again, grabbing her by the wrist before she can dig too deep. "Shepard! I'm serious."_

 _Her smirk fades as she starts to understand and pulls her hand away. She always understands. Sometimes I feel like she knows me better than anyone. I did once tell her that she was the only friend I had left. All we've been through since then has offered to alleviate that, but no one has gotten 5% as close to me as she has. I might never understand what it is about her that automatically affects me so much. Guess that's just how love is._

… _yeah. It is. Because this_ is _love I feel for her—there's nothing else it could be. Nothing else could cause me to abandon all reason the moment she touches me or let myself slip away every time I get lost in her emerald eyes. I find myself smiling again as any doubt I might have is pushed aside. I really do love her. Who would've guessed?_

 _Before I know it, I've reached over to wrap my hand around hers again. She looks down at this, watching as if for the first time. …maybe it is. She almost never talks about her life on Earth. She'll mention some days she spent on the streets, but she_ absolutely never _mentions anyone she knew. And from what we know of her service record, especially after Akuze, she wasn't exactly a very social soldier before Eden Prime. …could it be possible I'm the only one she's ever given this chance to? Did she really decide that_ I'm _the only one worthy of her heart? If that is true, I'll never understand why._

 _Of course, at this point, I can't see how anyone could truly be worthy of her._

 _She seems sullen now, as if lost in darker thoughts. It's never been easy for me to see her hurting or haunted like that. She deserves to be happy even when things seem dark. Even if she doesn't want to…_

 _She looks at me again right as I form my evil plan. She must see the same mischief in my eyes that I found in hers because she almost instantly realizes what I'm about to do. "Garrus, no! Don't!_ Garrus _—!"_

 _Too late. Before she can fight me off, I press my fingers behind her ear and start looking for those "over-receptive nerves."_

 _Almost instantly, her serious demeanor gives way to laughter so fierce it sounds like she's having trouble breathing. She finally manages to kick me, not enough to hurt me but hard enough that I'm out of reach. "Stand down, soldier!"_

 _"Nice try, Commander, but we're not on duty!" I overpower her just enough to start over and discover just how strong a reaction I can get from this._

 _In between the spasms she warned me about, she gets one hand free. But instead of pushing me away like I'm expecting, she reaches over to "scratch behind the ears" again._

 _"Shepard!" I snap even as pleasure takes over, "Knock it off!"_

 _"I'll stop when you stop!" she snaps back._

 _Within a second, we're practically at war, each of us trying to fight off the other without releasing our hold on them. The struggle, though, just brings us both to dig deeper until we end up falling over each other and landing on the floor, both of us still struggling with laughter._

"Shepard?" _a familiar synthesized voice suddenly comes over the intercom,_ "Is this a bad time?"

 _"No, EDI, please," Shepard answers, pulling it together but unable to stop smiling, "anything to make him cut it out."_

"We are approaching our destination. Shall we begin our descent?"

 _"I'll let you know when to signal Joker. Just give me a few minutes." As EDI acknowledges the order and leaves the room, Shepard takes a few deep breaths to steady herself and turns back to me, still smiling, her eyes as bright as the sun waiting outside. "And we were having so much fun."_

 _"You don't think shooting down geth is fun, too?" I smirk._

 _"No, it is." She sighs. "I just wish it could always be like this. No Reapers, no galaxy in jeopardy, just…"_

 _She doesn't have to say the rest. I know. I want the same thing. I keep my eyes locked on hers for a moment, slowly reaching over to her. The hand I extend to her longingly rests against her, and I bring myself to push her hair behind her ear. Then I smile as I start to brush my fingers against it._

 _She shies away, letting off the beginnings of a laugh, but it's out of reflex. She steadily eases back into it, pressing her hand against mine so that I couldn't move it if I wanted to. Then she gently reaches over with her other hand, placing it against my scars._

 _I press my free hand against it, clinging to it. It's enough to make me forget entirely all that we've been through. Like this is all that matters. She's always had a way of giving me my hope back even when I thought it was gone forever. Though, sometimes, I…sometimes, I still need more…_

 _Before I can convince myself not to, I tighten my grip on her hand just enough to move it. When I stop, her hand is in place not to stroke my scars but to "scratch behind the ears."_

 _She smiles again as she catches on. She knows this is the biggest sign of trust I can show to her in this moment. Still, she very delicately begins to follow through._

 _I don't fight it this time when the thrill kicks in. It's not as strong now, but it's still enough to make me wish it'd never end. As we slowly move closer to each other, never once letting go, the yearning deepens. I wish I could stay in this moment forever and never wake from this…_

… _dream… No, it_ is _a dream! I have no way to stop them, and memories flash in my mind. Not memories like this one, of these days I spent with her, but memories of war on her home-world, of fire raining down on us until I was forced to leave her to fight alone, of months of torture on both sides before—_

I wake up abruptly to the sound of glass shattering. As part of a habit I've developed over the past few weeks, I instantly reach to the side.

There's nothing there.

Ever since that day on Omega, there've been nights I woke up wondering if it really was all a dream, if maybe the poison killed me after all or I was never attacked to begin with and I'm still on Palaven mourning my _kalwen_. There was even one night I woke up from a nightmare so strong that the fear ran deeper, almost had me believing that maybe it was _all_ a dream and our love wasn't even real. But those fears have always been alleviated the moment I reach to the side and find her lying beside me in the bed. So when I reach out and she's not there, my heart starts pounding harder and harder at the thought that maybe my fears are justified.

I instantly start searching the room for some sign of her. I'm in the captain's cabin on the _Normandy_ and it's dark. But she's not here. Then I see that the lights in the bathroom are on and I realize what caused the noise that woke me. I'm not even thinking about what I'm doing (I can't since every thought I have is practically praying to the spirits that she's alright) when I simply throw the covers aside and run for the door.

As soon as I open the door, I see her. The sight of her is enough to calm me down. Every time I see her, I'm reminded of the longest— _worst_ —year of my life, of going almost 400 days thinking I would never see her again, and I feel the greatest joy I've ever felt overcome me to know that she's really alive, that I got her back and I'll never let her go again as long as I live. But, this time, that joy is extinguished almost immediately when I see blood on her hand. Not for the first time, my emotions take over my actions and I fall to my knees before her, reaching to make sure she's OK. "What happened?"

I can basically see what happened. The mirror's been broken and there's glass on the floor below where it hung, so one of the shards must have cut her hand. But I don't understand what broke it or how she managed to get injured when it did. And when she meets my eyes, I suddenly couldn't care less. There's terror behind the tears she's trying so hard to fight away—whether for my sake or her own I may never know—and she's shaking all over, even in her lungs. I thought it tore me apart when I saw her crying in the message she sent me as her last goodbye. But this? This is much, much worse.

Clearly, she doesn't want to talk about it and I'm not going to risk making her actually cry just to get my answer. I can't put her through that. I can't take it. So I force myself to forget about it and locate the small med kit she keeps in here and start treating the cut. Every second I do, I wonder at what could be hurting her so much. Commander Sara Shepard, who never wavered for a second before running under the biggest gun in existence to save the geth and the quarians, who risked everything to save everyone it was within her power to help, who almost singlehandedly defeated the Reaper army… I followed her without question through impossible situations every day for years because I trusted her more than anyone else and I knew she had the strength to face it all. But in all that time, I never saw her hurting this way.

She's never told any of us everything about what happened with the Crucible. And I saw what the Black Shadows did to her when they brought her back to use her as a weapon to take over the galaxy. Something in all that madness made her breakable. To see my _kalwen_ so fragile makes me…makes me…too many emotions at once. At the same time I want to hold her in my arms and never let go, I also want to track down whoever did this to her and break every bone in their body. Of course, that might be impossible now seeing as any one person who could be directly responsible is likely already dead.

Just when I'm almost finished bandaging her wounded hand, my thoughts are thrown from my mind completely when I feel her left hand softly trace my scars. Just for a moment, I forget everything else but the need to give in to the feelings coursing through me from her touch. But now's not the time. I finally bring myself to finish applying the bandage. Then I'm free to turn all my attention to her. Once again, I gaze into her emerald eyes. All the other times I've done that, I've gotten lost in them, hypnotized by the bright, shimmering spheres and the love behind them. This time, though, I see the pain buried inside them and all I want is to do everything I can to ease her suffering. She deserves that much. And it's certainly the least I can do after all she's given me.

She looks over at my scars as she continues to lightly run her fingers against them. I find myself moving in response, reaching up to take her hand in mine. "…are they still fading?" I can hear it in her voice. The anxiety. Anyone else might think she's worried I'm somehow still in pain from a wound I took two years ago. But I know her better than that. …she's asking for herself.

I sigh as I follow through on the move I already started and wrap my fingers around hers. "Slowly. Yeah." Honesty. Sympathy. Proof that I'm here for her, that I'll give her whatever she needs from me and everything will be OK…eventually.

She seems to take my answer well, but it doesn't seem to be helping much. Not that I'm surprised. There's no reason anything this deep could suddenly start getting better now. What bothers me, though, is that she seems so troubled by it that she can't even look at me. As if she's afraid it'll somehow pass her pain right to me. Maybe she doesn't realize that I would gladly take that deal if I thought for a second it would give her some peace again.

"…hey…" I reach over to her, placing my hand in her hair and gently forcing her to face me. My other hand still clinging to hers, I make sure she can see it in my eyes that she has nothing to be afraid of as long as I'm here. It's hard to show her that without adding on the part about me falling apart entirely if anything really happened to her now. I've already lost her twice, I can't take it again. One more time will kill me for sure without any help from any poison. But that's just one more reason for me to fight with all I have and more to keep her safe this time. We both know I'd give my life for hers in a second—I already tried to—and we both know she'd do the same for me—she already _did_. If we could only make sure that would never again be necessary, all our problems in life could be solved.

But nothing's ever that simple.

The look in her eyes doesn't change. She's still harboring the same fear, the same pain, the same…guilt? What does she have to be guilty about—? …oh. Right. The tears are gone now, but she's still hurting. After all she's been through, I can't say I blame her. My greatest wish is that I really could relieve her of some of that burden even if I had to take it upon myself. No one should have to bear it all alone.

Just when I'm about to start facing the threat of losing myself in her eyes again, she reaches up her bandaged hand and uses it to pull me closer. This is what we both need. Every time in the past that we've kissed, it's been like the world faded away and it was just us in this one perfect moment. This time is the first time I think it might actually _be_ possible to stay like this forever and leave the galaxy behind. So I throw reason out the window and give everything I have to this embrace. As I do, time falls away and I lose myself in her like I was so desperately longing to for over a year.

Sadly, though, we eventually have to break it off to breathe. But when we do, she leans against me and pulls her hand loose from my grasp so she can wrap her arms around me. I let her and hold her close. She's changed so much since she came back from the dead this time—that spark of mischief I loved so well is all but gone and there are times it seems like I'm the only reason she's really holding on anymore. But this, the way we cling to each other, determined to stay together for as long as we possibly can…this is the eternal constant. This will never change.

"…Garrus?" Sometimes I wonder if she's aware of how she makes my heart start pounding a little faster just from the way she says my name. She doesn't seem to know. But she does it so often it's like she's trying to draw out that all-consuming fire inside me so that I can't resist the desire to get lost in her all over again.

"Sara?" I answer her call and feel her breath catch for a moment when I do. She still hasn't gotten used to me calling her by her first name. But I can't stop now.

She takes a moment to voice her concern, as if she's afraid to. "…would you still love me if I wasn't human anymore?"

When I realize what she's asking, I freeze in shock. _…oh…_ That's what she's so afraid of. It's got nothing to do with all the torture she endured—she's always been too strong for that. No. She's worried that interfacing with the Reapers might have changed her somehow, that she's not who she was before she connected to the machines that tried to destroy all organic life in the galaxy. I'm not sure there's anything I can do to reassure her of that. We don't even know for certain if she isn't somehow different. But I know her. She's still Sara Shepard. That's all I need to know.

But she needs more. She needs me as much as I need her. So I push her away enough to look her in the eye when I give the honest truth so that she knows without a doubt how much I mean it: "I love you no matter what, Sara Shepard. Nothing will ever change that."

That's what she needed to hear. As soon as she knows it's true, her smile returns. It's faint, but it's enough to bring my own joy back, if briefly. Then she leans her head against mine and closes her eyes, her smile not fading once. That much brings me to smile back as I close my eyes as well and take in the sensation of having her pressed against me.

It's times like these that I wonder how I survived before she came into my life. Now that I think about it, every memory I have that doesn't involve her seems very dull or even painful.

Life on Palaven wasn't exactly easy. My father put a lot of pressure on me from day one. Military work certainly wasn't any easier but at least I found what I'm good at. Some days I wonder if going to work at C-Sec was the best choice to start with. At the time, I was more concerned with how I missed my shot at becoming a Spectre, but other concerns started weighing me down instead as time went by. Every case I worked made it worse and worse. The more I tried to keep at bay the crime running rampant through the Citadel, the more I saw how much was being allowed to just run free because of "technicalities" from all the rules and regulations. Dr. Saleon was the absolute worst. The day that psychopath got away was the day I almost lost it. When I got the chance to prove that Saren was a traitor, I figured it was my chance to make up for all of it. I threw everything I had into that case and it still wasn't enough. When Pallin shot me down, that was the last straw.

But then she found me. I didn't understand what happened when I first laid eyes on her. It actually made me forget for a moment what was eating away at me. It was much, much later that I started to see that I was falling in love with her from the moment we met. When I did see it, I didn't want to believe it. And there was too much on the line for me to let myself think about it. I didn't bother trying to deny how overjoyed I was that I ditched C-Sec to join the company of the first human Spectre and help her save the galaxy. But I did all I could to deny that I was having feelings for her. I probably didn't even realize that's what it was.

Not until the _Normandy_ SR-1 crashed. When I heard that she was dead, something inside me broke. I missed her. It hurt to think that she could be gone. Maybe that's one reason why I lost it completely when the Council started denying the Reaper threat. I thought everything would change after Sovereign's attack, but everyone just…what is it humans say? Right. Swept it under the rug. And everything stayed the same. Trying to get back with C-Sec at all during that was infuriating. I needed to do something that would actually make a difference, go somewhere I could do some good. I ended up on Omega. I may not have made much of a difference in the end, but at least all I endured led her right to me when she came back. After believing for two years that I'd never see her again, seeing her on that bridge gave me my hope back. That was something I hadn't had in a long time.

When I woke up after the gunship attack, the first place I went was right to her. Nothing could keep me away. I started to feel like myself again when I saw her alive and ready for the fight. She got me to laugh again for the first time in all too long. I already trusted her with my life and was more than willing to follow her into anything, but she went out of her way to help me the moment I asked for it. She saved me when I didn't even realize I was in danger. She showed me what I was afraid to face. After how I reacted, a small part of me was amazed she ever wanted to see me again. But the first place she went once we were back on the ship was straight to the battery to make sure I was alright. That was when we realized what we were feeling. Suddenly, there was no reason to deny or hide what was waiting there all along. Every day after that, we came to truly fall in love. I still may never understand why she would've trusted me, of all people, with that. But she did. And I did the same with her. And I'll never regret it.

For a moment, I feel like I should tell her so. But when I open my eyes, I see that the tears she was fighting back are starting to fall. The sight brings a familiar ache to my soul, the longing to keep her from ever feeling that kind of pain. I don't know what's bothering her now, so the best I can do is place a comforting hand to her face and wipe her tears away.

That brings her to open her eyes as well. When she sees mine, I see into hers. The pain she was drowning in when I first came in here has very drastically subsided and her fears seem to have been dismissed entirely by what I said to her. In fact, the light is starting to come back to her eyes. Before I can show my own confusion at why she'd still be upset, she starts to look confused for a moment, like she doesn't see why I'm still worried about her. Then she seems to notice how her eyes are watering and actually _laughs_. It's a small laugh, but it's real. I know because only her laugh could bring that surge of light to even the darkest corners of my mind. Just when my confusion starts getting deeper, she dries her eyes and looks into mine. The moment she does, I can see what she wants to say: _It's OK. I'm not crying. I'm happy…because of you._ She then proceeds to lean her head into the hand I extended to her and press her own hand against it to keep it in place.

Just hearing her laugh again was enough to make me happy. The way she clings to me now, not for a second allowing her eyes to look away from mine, makes those feelings intensify until I can't resist giving her a smile. That brings the same happiness to her. For the first time in all too long, I see a spark in her dazzling green eyes. The same spark I woke up to every other morning during the war, the one that first made me realize that what I felt for her and what she felt for me was love. I thought that spark died when she did, that it was lost somewhere along the way from the transition between her own body and her consciousness' presence with the Reapers. I've barely seen it since she came back. But it's still there, bright as ever and enough to bring back the burning need to lose myself in those eyes all over again. Some of my fondest memories with her started that way.

I won't lie and say it's been easy to love her. Love has a funny way of turning a guy like me into a nervous wreck with something to lose. And the aim to make sure he doesn't. Every time I thought there was even a chance I might lose her, I'd do whatever it took to help her stay alive. There were times she mocked me for being "overprotective." I usually retorted that she was being "self-destructive." Then she'd give me some big speech about how the galaxy was in danger and she had to do whatever it took to help even if it was at the cost of her own life. Anyone else would call that heroic. Not me. I'd always wait for her to finish then look both fiercely and pleadingly into her eyes when I gave my response: "You wouldn't be you if you didn't save the day all the time. But try to remember that I need you, too." Selfish in retrospect. But she understood. She always did. And when she forgot that plea entirely, when she disregarded my order to come back alive…that was the moment I lost her. What happened at the Crucible just made sure she stayed gone. It destroyed me. I was killing myself with the grief long before any emotional instability became life-threatening. Now I have her back again and there's no war looming over our heads. There's no way in the galaxy I'm losing her this time. No matter what it takes.

For a while, we stay like this. I'd be content to stay here all night, but I finally take notice of how her eyes are dimming. She's exhausted. I need to get her back to bed. Getting myself to stand up is not much of a problem, but she doesn't exactly rush to follow. She's still clinging to my hand, not letting it move, so I turn it just enough to take hold of hers in return. Then I pull it to bring her to her feet. Apparently, I pull just a little too hard because she stumbles forward. I move without thinking, wrapping my free arm around her so she doesn't fall. That leaves us locked together again. Suddenly, I can't remember why we moved and I lose all will to break from this. One hand tight in hers and the other pressed against her back to hold her close, I'm right where I want to be. Right where I longed for 13 months to be.

Then she curls up closer to me and I feel her leaning in just for the strength to stand and breathing at a slow, steady pace. Right. She's dead tired. From the way she's clinging to me, I'd say she's about ready to drop. As much as I'd love to carry her across the room, I'm not exactly wide awake myself and there is still some broken glass on the floor behind us, so we need to walk back while we still can. As I open the door and lead her through it by my hold on her hand, she turns out the lights behind us and follows me through the darkened room.

When we actually reach the bed, though, she gives my hand a mild though sharp tug, bringing me to stop moving and face her. I can barely see her in the dim light, but I don't need to. It's not like I wanna stop her. Just feeling her hand against me makes my heart start pounding again. Then she draws me forward enough for her to kiss my scars. Like always when she does that, it makes me fall in love all over again and know beyond a doubt how much she loves me. Sadly, though, she follows the gesture by pulling away from me to climb onto the bed.

After a moment of sheer joy from her kiss, I turn to look at her. I see her sitting on the bed and hugging her knees. The second she knows I'm looking her way, she nods pointedly to the side of the bed she's not occupying. Not that she had to. I already know she wants— _needs_ me there. She hasn't been able to sleep peacefully for one night since her return. Not unless I'm here with her. I'm definitely not complaining. It's the same for me. But it's been more _violent_ with her and I'm not risking anything with her when I just got her back. So I don't hesitate for a second before going around to the free side of the bed and sitting down there. Once I'm here, I reach over and take her hand. I need the assurance that this is real and not a dream as much as she needs to know that I'll always be right here when she needs me.

It's strange how life works. How we could go from covering each other in firefights to covering each other in dreams. How a turian and a human could find love with each other. How I found my _kalwen_ in the last place I expected. I'd like to believe that everything we've been through has led us here, allowed us to have a chance at a real life together. A chance I have absolutely no intention of wasting.

"Never let me go again." She pleads the same thing every night. As if she's afraid I ever could.

I answer wordlessly by squeezing the hand I'm hanging onto and leaning closer. In case that's not enough, I translate it: "Wouldn't dream of it."

I think I can see her smile, even in the darkness. Then, as I cling to her hand, I feel her place her other against mine, warmly caressing it with her fingers. I wish I could give in to this, but we both need to rest while we can. So before she can cook up some reason not to and talk me out of it, I retrieve the covers I threw aside in my earlier panic and bring them back into place. She reluctantly lets go of my hand so she can lie down beside me and I follow her lead. She wraps herself around me, only relaxing once she's certain I'm right here and not going anywhere. I smile briefly and reach over to stroke her hair. I can feel her shivering and her heartbeat briefly pulsing when I touch her. _Guess I just have that effect on her,_ I smirk to myself as I use my other hand to hold her close. I lose myself in the fainting rhythm of her heart as she slowly fades asleep, so hypnotic that I don't take long to follow…

…

…"Garrus?"

I feel someone nudging me, a familiar voice pulling me from my slumber. It's not her. So who is it? I force myself to open my eyes and look.

Liara is standing next to me as EDI waits by the door. "We need to talk."

This sounds really urgent. I look over at my _kalwen_ , still asleep in my arms. I don't want to move. But I want to wake her up even less. Carefully, I slide out of her hold and get up from the bed, following Liara over to the door. Once we reach it, I open it. After Liara and EDI are in the small hallway between the cabin door and the elevator, I close the door back and turn to them. "What's wrong?"

"We went through the data we recovered from the Shadows' base," Liara explains, "like you suggested, and EDI performed a few scans on Shepard last night. The results were…troubling."

That doesn't sound good. I try to hide the fact that my pulse is rising and my mind is racing with reasons for why the results would come back as "troubling"— _She's dying_ is the worst of all of them. "Why? What'd they say?"

"I believe we have found the source of Shepard's attacks," EDI says.

The attacks. The moments when that blue flash strikes through her eyes and she takes leave of her senses. Brief but terrifying, most of all to her. They've been happening ever since before we freed her from the Shadows, presumably since they brought her back to begin with. Every time it happens, she breaks down. She doesn't want us to worry about it. But I can't help but worry. I asked Liara and EDI to try to figure out the cause in secret. Looks like they've found it…and didn't like the answer.

EDI hesitates to explain. She probably did a quick scan of me and saw how much I'm already freaking out. Still, she finally brings herself to elaborate: "When I ran a continuous scan of her brain waves at the time of one of the attacks, I was able to isolate a unique spike in the readings. Each of the attacks…was provoked by Reaper code."

Every panicked thought brewing inside me is stamped out instantaneously the moment she says that. I don't know what to think. My body and even my mind is paralyzed. Somehow, though, I bring myself to react. "…what?"

"The abnormal chromatic flare in her eyes—the 'blue flash'—is indicative of her neurons receiving signals from active Reaper units in dark space."

"It appears that what we are in contact with, what she is consciously aware of," Liara says, "is only a fraction of her true mind. While her soul, her spirit, the essence of who she is, remains within her body, her subconscious mind is still spread out to the Reapers, controlling them permanently though without direct correlation. Every so often, that link reaches the piece of her mind connected to her natural form. But the rest of it is communicating the way the Reapers do. Her organic state is not designed to commune that way. The messages are like shocks to her nervous system."

With every word, my emotional reaction gets worse. It's too much all at once, something I can't relate. Finally, I just settle for leaning against the wall, staring at the floor. "…spirits…"

"If it is any consolation," EDI speaks up, "the attacks seem to be decreasing in intensity. What was at first immobilizing is now barely hurting her. Her system is adjusting. As she continues to adapt, eventually she will not notice the attacks at all. They are erratic, however, so it may be difficult to find a way to treat them in the meantime if she so desires—"

"You can't tell her!" I instantly snap, just barely keeping my voice down enough that it won't wake her from the other side of the door.

Liara is certainly shocked at that ( _EDI_ is). "I'm sorry?"

"We can't tell her. We can't tell _anyone_."

"I can understand withholding this information from the crew," EDI says, "But I believe Shepard has a right to know."

"No! She had one of the attacks last night and she was terrified of this. If she finds out she really is still connected to the Reapers, it'll destroy her. I can't put her through that." I can't. I can't do it. I think of broken mirrors and bright red blood in a shaking hand, of shallow breaths and watering green eyes filled with fear. Now I know what happened. That was when the threat of a permanent connection to those monsters was just a distant possibility. If she sees it as reality… Just the thought of how she could react is enough to break me down. I swore I'd protect her. I never want to see her hurt again. I'll do whatever it takes to make sure I don't have to.

Though Liara is still somewhat shocked, EDI brings herself to speak again. "If she ever discovers you have been keeping secrets from her, you will likely lose her trust."

I know that. For a moment, I remember the panic gripping my lungs and the dread clawing through my heart at the thought of losing her forever. I remember watching her run for the conduit on Earth and reaching for her with all the strength I had left. I remember pacing through her cabin after the fight with the Shadows on Korlus, hoping for the first time that I was wrong about her being alive and that she hadn't truly forgotten me—forgotten _us_. I remember nightmares in hopeless nights when I almost thought she didn't love me and the only thing that kept me from breaking was all I had left of her. I remember how the grief tore me apart, the hallucinations from the Shadows' poison, the chemically-induced "siren song" that almost secured my death, the way she seemed to haunt me. _I can't lose her now._

But then I remember her broken and helpless in the Shadows' lair. I remember how she cried at the thought of losing the war—of losing _me_. I remember how she broke down after Thessia fell. I remember how she begged me never to let go of her again because I was all she had left to hold onto. And, most of all, I remember waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of shattering glass, finding her bleeding from a wound that was self-inflicted (whether an accident or not) in a moment of sheer panic brought on by the fear that she might somehow be something other than what she was before her death…something other than human. I've never seen her more hurt or distressed than I did last night. It kills me every time as is. That much pain is something she should never have to endure. _…never again._

I'd rather see her walk away than see her fall apart.

I sigh, still not meeting EDI's eyes. "For her? …that's a risk I'll take any day."

Lucky for me, EDI actually understands. "Very well. I will purge this information from all accessible networks…including my own."

Now I do look at her. For EDI to rewrite her own memory, that's…unthinkable. This is beyond a show of friendship. I definitely don't have the words for it. Guess I'll just have to settle for the obvious. "…thank you."

EDI simply nods and heads for the elevator.

Now it's just me and Liara.

Liara looks at me. I can see it in her eyes. Concern. For me and for Shepard. She's always been one of the most compassionate people I've ever known (not to mention one of our closest friends), so it's no surprise. "Are you sure about this, Garrus?"

A small part of me still says "no." The selfish part of me. But every other part of me is too in love with the human in question to care. "Yeah. I'm sure." I bring myself to face my asari companion again. I have a question of my own. "Can I trust you with this, Liara?" As soon as I ask it, I know I didn't need to. If it wasn't for her, I'd never have survived any of the attacks from the Shadows' poison. She's seen my mind and she's seen Shepard's. She knows how we feel about each other and that I'll do anything to protect both it and her. If she's any kind of friend, she won't jeopardize that.

At first, she smirks. "I do keep secrets for a living." Then, once she's accomplished her goal of both reminding me how true that is and letting some light back into this dark situation, she sighs, slowly growing serious again. When she does give her answer, she looks straight into my eyes so I can see how much she means it. "I care about her, too, Garrus, even if not the way you do. I do not wish to see her suffer either. With this? …you can trust me."

I can believe that. It's kind of hard not to. I've known her for four years now, I'd like to think I know her pretty well. There are very few people in the galaxy I trust. Far fewer I could trust with something like this. Lucky for me, Liara does fall under that category. She'll carry this past our dying days if need be. The more I think about it, the more I believe I wouldn't want anyone else to share this burden with. …yeah. I can trust her.

For one final reassurance, she places a hand on my arm and gives me a small smile. Only then does she step over to the elevator and leave the deck.

I sigh, taking a moment for myself before opening the door and heading back into the cabin. I stay quiet as I walk through, thinking things over. When I reach the steps halfway through the cabin, I lean against the wall and lose control of my mind, like I did when I was grieving her.

We all knew already that she was somehow aware of the Reapers, we all saw her writing Reaper code at the Shadows' base. Liara herself even confirmed that the asari "mind switch" Shepard described shouldn't have been possible with a whole consciousness, even if it was treated like the Cipher. But we also knew that she was quite clearly separated for good. Except, apparently, she's not. They're still connected with her. If she really is a part of them…then she…she could be…

…no. I said it last night and I meant it. I love her and nothing will ever change that. Yes, she is still hooked up to the Reapers, but not consciously. The fact that she's even in a state where she could be so worried about it proves that it hasn't changed who she is. She's still the woman I love.

She'll always be my _kalwen_.

As the thought truly breaks through, I just barely resist a laugh. If you'd told me five years ago that I'd start calling a human my _kalwen_ , I would've been very skeptical. Now I can't imagine ever doing less with her or feeling anything close to this with anyone else. Pushing the doubts away entirely, I instead reach for the brighter memories of the days since she came back to me…

… _like the day we spent with our old squad-mates just after leaving Omega. Everyone was still on some level of recovery after that last fight with the Shadows and agreed to stick around for a while if only to help the reacclimatizing Shepard. She never let it show, but she really needed that. Of course, there wasn't much to do just hanging around the ship all day but someone eventually brought up the select few nights before the suicide mission when Shepard talked the team into "movie night." And once the idea was in the air, Sara almost instantly suggested we try doing it again with three 180-year-old human vids she had loved pretty much all her life, something called_ Lord of the Rings _—really close to the mythology she enjoys so much, so I can see why she brought it up. Before we even got it playing, she'd pulled me onto the couch and curled up next to me, laying her head against my shoulder and taking hold of my arm. I responded by wrapping my other arm around her. We stayed like that for the whole thing, which ended up being nearly 12 hours long. Then, of course, we wound up spending 10 hours the next day watching_ Hobbit _in much the same manner. Not that I'm complaining._

… _or the night after, the first time since her return that I came to her cabin without waiting to be called up. I wound up coming in a few minutes after she had taken a shower and her hair was still wet. Judging by the way I ended up staring at it, it must have been the first time I saw that. Funny how a little water could somehow turn light red into…well, actual_ red _. Her back was to the door and she was really intently focused on the datapad in her hands, which meant she didn't even know I was there. So I snuck up behind her, carefully set my left hand on her left shoulder, and started to run my right hand through her hair. At first, she seemed startled—of course, I should've expected her to be keeping her guard up—and outright dropped the datapad onto the bed. Then she realized who was behind her and smiled, tilting her head to the right as she placed her hand over mine. For a moment, I simply took pleasure in having her here with me. When that moment was over, she slowly pushed my hand away and turned to face me, holding her gaze on my eyes for exactly three seconds before drawing me closer so we could kiss again. Even after over a year of grief, that was more than worth the wait._

… _or just a night ago, when I held her close in the bed and watched the stars with her because she couldn't even fall asleep. I wasn't exactly fading myself, so I wound up referring back to a conversation we had during one of these moments in the war, when she told me about the pictures in the stars and the stories they told. She responded by searching the sky for some of the ones she knew and pointing them out to me, even telling me the stories behind them. After about five, I stopped listening and lost myself in her eyes again, a sight I thought far more beautiful than any star in the sky. Eventually, she seemed to lose interest in the stories as well and turned her attention to me. When she saw the way I was looking at her, she smiled and pulled in closer to me, laying her head against my chest. I slid my fingers into her hair and moved her just enough so that her ear was over my heart. The gentle pounding rhythm finally brought her to sleep. I didn't rush to follow. I stayed awake long enough to run my fingers through her hair for a while and watch her steady breathing._

 _Huh. Turns out the greatest moments of my life really have been exclusively reserved for her._

Just that thought is enough to bring back the insanely pleasant feeling I associate with my emerald-eyed Shepard. When I at last bring myself to step over to the bed and see her curled up there, deep in a sleep that's, for once in her life, peaceful and just as beautiful as she is awake, I fall in love all over again and can't resist smiling. I take a few steps closer and gently stroke her light red hair again. She must recognize the touch because she starts to stir. At the thought of her waking up, I remember the fear in my heart from waking up alone. I can't put her through that either. So I make my way over to the free side of the bed and crawl back in, carefully, caringly, wrapping her arms back around me before placing my own around her. As the feeling of simply lying here with her takes me over again, I almost hope I can fall asleep and pretend that my exchange with EDI and Liara never happened so I don't have to carry that weight at all. It's not like anything would change. This, holding her again…this is all that matters.

I'm close enough to feel her heartbeat again. My right hand is pressed to her back, in just the place to feel the slow, steady rhythm. I let myself get lost in it again and chase all other thoughts away, taking any concept of time I currently have with it. This pure, musical sensation is beyond captivating, strong enough in itself to fight any fears I might have. At the very least, it's undeniable evidence that she's truly alive and here with me. I've needed that desperately for far too long.

After I-don't-care-how-long, I look down to my side, where her right arm is draped over me, and see the bandage on her hand. Cautiously, using my left hand both because it's closer and so I don't have to take my right hand away from her heart, I bring her wounded hand up to where I can see it. The bleeding stopped sometime in the night, but the bandage itself is still stained red over the cut. I recognize the tightening inside me as I see it—the same miserable sensation that strikes me every time I see her hurting. Now I realize that I'm seeing the same thing she sees when she looks at my scars. So I do what she does for them and kiss her where she was hurt. Tenderly brushing my fingers against the fading injury, I place her hand back where it was and begin to slowly slide my hand over it and up her arm to her shoulder.

Without waking up, she responds. No…no, it's not in response to my touch. I know what that feels like. The way she's moving, huddling closer to me as if searching for protection, implies fear more than longing. That's enough to worry me. She could be having one of the nightmares again or reliving some of the horrors she's endured. The thought of her suffering so deeply even in her sleep hurts me. She deserves so much better than that. I've been doing all I can to give it to her. But while the attacks may eventually fade, the memories won't go away. Nothing can ease that. At least not anything I can do. The only thing I can do is wake her up before it becomes too much for her to bear. "Sara…"

She moans softly from the sound of my voice whispering her name into her ear. Then she starts to really wake up. When she does, she leans back so that the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is mine.

That much gives me the urge to smile for her again. Seeing the spark come back to her eyes, getting the chance to wake up to it again for the first time in well over a year, makes me follow through. "Hi."

She smiles back, so bright and _happy_ that I forget about everything else. "Hey." Before I know it, she's leaning closer and we kiss again. For some reason, we shift position during it and go from lying down to sitting, but I don't really notice. All I care about is how we're holding to each other, rapturous and unbreakable. Nothing could keep me away.

But I don't lose my thoughts in it this time. My mind is weighed down—not by what I learned, but by the thought of hiding something so life-changing from her. Just when I believe I've succeeded in covering this up, she pulls away from me. When I meet her eyes, I find that they're silently asking why I was holding back. I can't answer. I am never going to tell her. But I absolutely cannot lie to her. So all I can do is turn away.

She knows. She has to. She knows I'm keeping something from her. And here I was counting on at least a few days of suspicion before we faced this. Am I going to lose her already? I can't take that. I thought I could, but…

Before I know it, she's quietly running her fingers against my left hand. I find my gaze caught on this. I know what she's thinking. The hand she's holding to is the same one that was broken in the last battle with the Shadows, just before I attempted to give my life for her. The thought of me suffering for her sake is hurting her. That's it, then. She's trying to tell me that she knows I'm hiding something from her and she couldn't care less. At least, I want to believe that. Then I feel her hand pressed to my scars again, one finger gently stroking them. Like usual when she does it, my heart beats just a little harder and I know this love is real. Which means her assurance must be true. Even that is drowned out, though, as a wave of ecstasy floods through me from—hey, _wait a minute_!

I quickly move to push her off when I realize what she's doing. Her hand was behind my scars. "Scratching behind the ears." I see her smirking at me and I know she meant to. Honestly! The way she makes my heart speed up when she touches me or says my name is one thing, but _that_? She _knows_ how _that_ affects me. That'd be like _me_ …! _…hmm…_ Before she can figure out what I'm planning, I reach over to her ear and start sliding my fingers across the flesh just behind it. When she gets a chance to push me away, she's already laughing.

It's really her really laughing. The small laugh she gave last night might have been enough to make me smile for her, but this lights up my whole world. I was expecting my "retribution" to make me smile again, but this—pure, unrestrained joy from my _kalwen_ , something I have most definitely not seen since she came back to me—this gives me more than I could've hoped for.

As I smile to her to ensure that she knows how happy that makes me, I notice that her method of escape tossed her hair over her eye. I don't even think before reaching over to brush the light red strands away from her face. She doesn't even react, just keeps her eyes locked on mine. I can practically feel the need rising inside me to get lost in the sight of radiant emerald glistening with whispers of unequaled love. Just a glance at it fills my thoughts with sheer delight as I realize it's true. Nothing can ever change that. "What were you dreaming about?"

She smiles again. That's enough to make my worries fade completely as I believe she's finally managed to bury the past and find some happiness again. But she still answers my question. "…how you woke me up." Guess I was right. Not that it matters. As long as she's found her way, whether or not I somehow gave it to her…that's good enough for me.

I guess she knows it as much as I do. Suddenly, we've both stopped holding back entirely. While we bring each other closer, I feel her digging in between the plates again, bringing back the ecstatic feeling she sends sweeping through me every time she does. This time, I let her instead of fighting her off, so I don't bother stopping myself from audibly reacting. The whole time, I lightly stroke her around her ear, causing her to light up with delight and just barely suppress miniature fits of laughter. I must be dreaming again. Surely, it's not physically possible to be _this_ _happy_.

As loyal as I've been to her over the years, I never would've predicted we'd make it this far. At times like these, I almost believe that all we've been through has been worth it if only because it's given us this chance. She's starting to seem more like herself again. That brings me to feel like myself again, too, like _she's_ the one who brought _me_ back to life. Maybe she is. I can't say I was really living much without her. I don't see how I ever could. There's no way in the galaxy I could ever truly survive without the human I love, Sara Shepard, my _kalwen_. No matter what happens, I know I want to spend the rest of my life with her. And now I know that she wants the same. I know she loves me as much as I love her. In the end, that's all I really need.


End file.
